A change of plans

Yes, you read that correctly. After all the hoopla and excitement of heading to Alaska, we just decided to put that trip off until next year.

So, are we heading back home now? Heck no . . . instead of going North, we will be heading East towards Glacier National Park. From there we will head north to Banff and Jasper in Alberta, Canada and then South to Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Colorado, Utah and Grand Canyon.Still a magnificent trip that excites us greatly, but we cannot help but be somewhat saddened by postponing our Alaska adventure.

So what happened?There are two major things that contributed to this decision.

1. The DMV has not yet issued my Non-Commercial Class B driver’s license. Due to miscommunications within the DMV, the license has been in limbo for about 2 months and will take approximately another 4 weeks or so before I get it. They have apologized and have extended my interrim license, but we now face a delay as we feel uncomfortable entering Canada without this having been formalized. Very frustrating, but not much we can do.

The delays encountered by waiting for the driver’s license would have us arrive in Alaska about 5 weeks later than we had planned for. That puts pressure on the length of time we want to stay there as we do not want to be in Alaska when temparatures start to drop. In other words, we do not want to compromise the trip by being forced to head back just to avoid cold. Call us whimps if you wish, but we want to enjoy the trip and not feel rushed.

2. A secondary factor in the change of plan is the fact we have encountered too many locations with no AT&T cell phone coverage. We both have AT&T phones. Not being reachable and the thought of not being able to call anyone concerns us. We have now remedied that by acquiring a 3rd phone on a Verizon plan, but it still drove home to us that we are very much at the mercy of cell tower and wifi access points. Poor or no cell phone and wifi coverage makes working in the motorhome hard. Being off-the-grid is simply not an option. We have no less than 3 hotspots (AT&T, Verizon and Sprint) so we do have our options covered. We have even purchased a booster that enhances the strngth of cellular signals, but still . . . coverage will get less and less as we head North so not only is caution needed, we simply did not want the stress of having to worry whether I could work or not.

The new plan

As mentioned above, the new plan is to first return to Anacortes to see a few things we missed, then head East along the Canadian border towards Glacier National Park. By then we hope to have received this darned driver’s license and will go North into Canada to explore Banff and Jasper in the Canadian Rocky Mountains.

After that we will start heading South and will make our way through Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. We have both been there before, but did not spend anywhere as long as we had wanted so this is a great opportunity to indulge.

After that, we want to visit Colorado, maybe shoot the fall color there if the timing and conditions work out for us. Lastly, start heading West again via the Canyons of the Ancients, Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon. Maybe swing into Southern Utah to see some spots we did not get to last year and then head back home. This will probably be around end of September, but who knows . . . . ?